A Little About Me

I’m Brian Pendergraft Esq., real estate attorney at The Pendergraft Firm, LLC & Chief Brand Officer for Branded Lawyer. I started my own practice with no experience running a business. I now get over 100 leads per month. And just so you know I am not exaggerating are the phone calls I got from a 30 day period from my Google my business listing.

These numbers do not include phone calls from other sources, contacts through my booking app, or my chat box. All together I get well over 100 leads per month. While not leaving the house.

But it didn’t start that way. I used to get clients the old-fashioned way. Good old hand-to-hand combat.

My Struggle With Hand To Hand Combat

Because I had no idea how to generate leads I did a lot of what is called hand to hand combat to mixed results. You may have tried these same methods…

• Going to every lawyer networking event to get referrals.
• Going to BNI or similar business networking events to get referrals.
• Engaging on social media and internet forums to interact with prospects.
• Answering questions on law firm directories such as Avvo.
• Presented at different networking events.
• Joining multiple e-mail listserves to get referrals.

To be fair, a lot of it worked. As I said I got mixed results. But I was exhausted. I was tired of engaging with numerous e-mails, answering questions on directories, driving to different networking events in DC Metro area traffic.

To make matters worse, all this exposure due to those methods can backfire. These people you engage with can for free can become your worst enemies. For example, I answered a woman’s question on Avvo for free. She called me seeking free legal advice. She left me a bad review after I did not give her more free advice.

I’ve had numerous negative interaction that still persists to this day because I did not position myself correctly with the right marketing strategies. I have haters in different networking groups that I have attended that have not paid me a dime to provide them with legal services. This is what happens when you make yourself too readily available and give away time for free.

The constant hand to hand combat while practicing law was exhausting. Particularly one week where I went to a different networking event every day of the week, on top of practicing law. I had created my own personal hell. I think I realized this when I stayed with my brother for a few days. He told me he could tell that I wasn’t happy. And it dawned on me that he was right. I needed a new way to do things.

Finding A Better Way

I needed to find a way to balance my lawyering and marketing hats. I decided the best way to do this would be to find a way to do both by staying home. I didn’t realize it at the time but by doing so I also raised the barrier of what it takes to gain access to me. I don’t talk to people anymore unless they pay, and they are happy to do so. Not only that, the people that are happy to pay are the least stressful. They recognize the value of my services.

If I can make money when I sleep, then for me that would be the holy grail. And I found it. People find me every week and pay me for legal phone consultations in advance and buy my digital legal products, while I am sleeping. I pick and choose whether I feel like taking on cases that would require me to leave my house. I found the holy grail, and here is how you find it.

The Holy Grail- Automated Lead Generation

I found the holy grail, and her name is automated lead generation. Automated lead generation is using technology to build assets that generate leads for you. I realized I’ll never make money while I’m asleep if the main driver for my business is hand to hand combat.

And I’ll show you the three secrets to automated lead generation for law firms.

Secret #1 – Brand Yourself The Subject Matter Expert So People Seek You Out

I have one word for how I ended up branding myself an expert. Unintentionally. When I first started practicing law I didn’t know how to do much other than landlord/tenant law. I created a law blog where I created and shared content on landlord/tenant law. In the online marketing world, this is called finding a “niche.” I niched down before I knew what niching was.

When you niche down a few things happen…

• I became known as a landlord/tenant expert.
• Landlords and tenants sought me out for their landlord/tenant issues. They felt more comfortable hiring me because I was the expert in their eyes.
• Lawyers wanted to become referral partners because we practiced didn’t areas.
• People searching the internet for lawyers in my jurisdiction would find my content and buy my legal products or pay me for consultations.
• The people that found me, liked me. They were already convinced I was an expert before we even spoke.

For these reasons, the first step in creating an automated lead generation machine is to create content that brands you as a subject matter expert.

Objections!

But I still want to practice multiple areas of law! You still can. Just don’t advertise or create content for everything that you do. The key is to automated lead generation is to become the sought-after subject matter expert. When you need heart surgery, you want to hire a heart surgeon. The best heart surgeon in the world if possible. Lawyer advertising is the same. People want to hire the best criminal lawyer in town. So create content that brands you as the subject-matter expert in whatever you love doing the most. It doesn’t matter what area of law you pick either because if you’re the subject-matter expert you can generate over a hundred leads per month.

I used to think that being a general practitioner and taking the wide path was the best way to get money. But I learned that the pot of gold as at the end of the narrow path. Quite literally. I’m selling products that cost a few hundred dollars in my niche.

I spent thousands of dollars on a managed website service that did a subpar job. In fact, they did more harm than good. And many of the decent law firm web presence providers charge 60k per year, which I couldn’t afford.

I also believe that many vendors prey on attorney’s lack of technological knowledge. (I can hear the protests of bitter vendors claiming that we lawyers prey on our client’s lack of legal knowledge). The managed vendor that I went with owned my web presence. That’s right, the key to me making money while I slept was owned by someone else.

Many of these vendors also charge $700 (starting, easily $5k) per month to maintain a static website! Let me differentiate the difference between an automated lead generation machine and a static website. A static website is a billboard that people only find when they type in your domain name, which almost no one will. With an automated lead generation, machine people will find you when they search for attorneys or answers to legal questions in your subject matter.

I got ripped off. You’re probably getting ripped off. So here’s who to hire to build your automated lead generation machine to get the most bang for your buck. With the money we save, we can dump into marketing efforts that are 100x more valuable than the bad vendors.

DIY, Freelancers & Your In-House Team

Only you can prevent forest fires. That’s right, the best person to build your automated lead generation machine is yourself, freelancers, & your own in-house team. I can hear your objections now, but Brian, I’m not tech-savvy. I’m not asking you to be. Remember the key is to become a subject matter expert (see secret #1). You simply need to create a simple platform and fill it with great content on your subject. You do not need a fancy website.

More on my story. After getting ripped off by vendors I decided to create a website using a blogging platform (The platform does 99% of the coding work). That’s the website that I filled with landlord-tenant content. I’m not a designer so my website was super clean and basic.

And you don’t even have to do it. There are freelancers can do both (1) & (2) if you will it, for both a fraction of the cost and for exponentially better results.

Larger firms can do the valuable work in-house by training a content manager to help attorneys create content and then the content manager can distribute it. Your in-house content manager is an invaluable addition to your team.

Objections!

But I’m not tech savvy – You don’t have to be. The blogging platforms take care of the hard part. & what you can’t (or don’t feel like doing) you can outsource.

But I don’t have time to create content – There are tactics to create multiple pieces of content in one sitting. Or you can outsource content to freelancers. These methods are also less time consuming than hand to hand combat. In addition, if I go out and get a client that’s great, I have to go out the next day. Or I can sit down one day and write an article, and have multiple leads find me from that article. Building your automated lead generation machine is a better use of time. Larger firms can hire an in-house content manager to help the attorneys create and distribute the content that will become the assests to bring in clients for the firm.

Secret #3 – How To Spend Your Money To Scale To Infinity

After branding yourself a subject matter expert (Secret #1) and created your platform (secret #2) it’s time to spend money to scale your practice to infinity. And you can do this by figuring out your Cost Per A,cquisition (CPA).

This is the amount of money that it takes to acquire a new client. Let’s take this hypothetical for, example. Suppose that a failure to pay rent case for my firm is worth $750. I spend $100, to acquire 14 leads. Let’s say three of those leads turn into clients. That’s a cost per acquisition of $33. Would you spend $33 to make $750? Of course you would.

By the way, this isn’t a hypothetical. I really did this using Facebook Ads!

Now It doesn’t have to be Facebook Ads. The same applies for Google AdWords, Pinterest ads, or even direct mail.

I’m not the biggest fan of law firm directories or many paid directories in general. You know how those firms give you leads? By taking the money you spend on them and figuring out their cost per acquisition to get more leads. And those leads are dispersed to the attorneys in those fields. I would rather spend $100 to get 14 leads to people that interact with me on a platform where I am the only attorney, i.e. my own.

Objections!

But ads are hard! I learned to write ads the same way I learned to write motions. Copying someone else. If you can copy you can copy write. In the alternative, your team of freelancers can also write your ads and run your campaigns if you don’t want to. I am currently working on training my in house team so I don’t have to write my own ads anymore. Baby steps!

Quick Recap

So. there you have it. Those are the three secrets to building your very own automated lead generation machine. Brand yourself a subject matter expert so people seek you out. Build your platform yourself or hire freelancers to do it. And figure out your cost per acquisition to spend money to grow via paid ads.

Secret #1 Brand Yourself a Subject-Matter Expert
• Regularly publish content online in your subject matter on your platform. Why? Because People will seek you out to hire you and buy your products.

Secret #2 Who To Hire To Build Your Automated Lead Gen. Machine
• DIY, hire freelancers, and build your own in-house team. Because not only will you save a lot of money, you can build a better-automated lead gen machine this way.

Secret #3 How To Spend Money To Scale Infinitely
• Use paid ads to scale to infinity. Because once you figure out your cost per acquisition you can scale as much as you want.

Our Special Offers

So, if you were recognized as a subject matter expert in your practice area (secret #1), knew how to building your own platform or hire freelancers to do it (secret #2) and figured out how to use paid ads to scale as much as you want, do you think you’ll be able to stay home and make money while you’re sleeping? Do you think your life will be transformed? Because mine definitely was.

We put together step by step video tutorials to show you how to implement all three of these secrets and build your own automated lead generation machine.

The Branded Law Blog – Beyond SEO

The first is our flagship course, The Branded Law Blog – Beyond SEO. This course covers both secret #1 and secret #2. You’ll learn how to build the platform for your automated lead generation machine with step by step video tutorials, and the strategies for creating content online. The course also covers the tools that I use to make money while I’m asleep. Goodbye hand to hand combat. It’s approximately 20+ videos and 30 modules total.

(Keep reading for our special offer just for people who read this e-book).

Facebook Ads For Lawyers

Our Facebook Ads for Lawyers course covers secret #3, how to use paid ads to scale as much as you want. This course teaches you how to run Facebook ads using step by step video tutorials. In addition, I provide you with an ad copy worksheet with a copy of my highest performing ad so you can copy me.

And lastly, we have Google Adwords For Lawyers In One Day which also covers secret #3. We designed this course to teach you how to effectively get started with paid advertising in (you guessed it) one day. Like the Facebook ads course it walks you through with step by step video tutorials on how to create effective Google Adwords campaigns and contains ad copy cheat sheets you can copy.

The written modules teach important lessons such as outsourcing services and the tools that I use to make money while I’m sleeping.

I think the courses are the easiest way for attorneys to learn how to build their own automated lead generation machine and/or train their freelancers and in-house team to do it. But don’t take my word for it, check out these testimonials.

Testimonial #1

Testimonial #2

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. We hope you enjoyed learning about the strategies we use to make money while staying at home. Check out brandedlawyer.com for the hottest articles on online branding for law firms.